Welcome to my journal. It is friends only, so if you want me to add you, just comment to this entry to let me know why I should.

I always have a hard time doing friends cuts, because it makes me feel like I’m letting people down, as if I’m judging them not to be good enough for me, which is of course not the case.
This time around, I found the decision even more difficult, because I’ve decided to remove some people from my flist who have been here for a very long time. So I figured that although this is my journal and I can do whatever I want with it, this decision did require some sort of an explanation.
Although I do use LJ for personal reference as well, I mainly see it as a place to share my thoughts and feelings with friends and also to meet new people, not necessarily like-minded because sometimes seeing things from a whole new perspective can be very enlightening. Like in real life (an expression which I hate to use, because even though I’m only communicating virtually with most of you you are very real to me) not every interesting encounter grows into a life-long friendship. And that is ok. Sometimes you hang out for a while with someone and share things and have fun together, and after a while you just drift apart and go your separate ways, and it doesn’t necessarily involve a dramatic fall out. You take your experiences and memories of each other with you and maybe you’ve even learnt something. Because it is my firm belief that although not every encounter evolves into something everlasting, it does always influence or even change the parties involved, so you never walk away and be entirely the same person.
I’m currently at a stage where I have this strong urge to reevaluate all kinds of aspects of my life and in a way simplify it. Taking things apart to really get back to the core, so to speak. (I hope that makes sense). Listening to and acting on my instincts more often is one of those things.
I’ve been considering this friends cut for quite some time now. With those of you I’ve decided to remove from my list, I don’t feel there’s much room for development in our friendship anymore. I think you have to agree with me that there has barely been any interaction in either direction for a year or even longer. And in my opinion, interaction is a necessity to keep a friendship alive and thriving. I’d rather thank you now for the good and the bad times we shared and then go our separate ways with no hard feelings, than to hang around reading each other’s entries and feeling a sense of guilt every single time I find myself unable to come up with a meaningful comment. Because that’s how it works for me. I’m still reading every single entry on my flist, but because of the lack of interaction that’s been going on I often feel it’s not my place to offer judgement, advice or support, because we’re just not close enough for that. I feel that I’ve become a phantom friend, there, but not really there.
Let me repeat that you are all wonderful people, I’m grateful to have known you and to have been able to follow a part of your lives’ journeys through reading your journals. Also, this has nothing to do with prolonged LJ silences/absences, we all go through those and I respect that. For those of you who haven’t made it through the cut, I wish you all the best in every aspect of life. I hope you can understand and respect my reasons for doing this.

I feel I'm making progress where the commitment I recently made to myself is concerned. I'm taking one step at a time, giving myself a chance to adjust to each new level I reach. Time is a huge factor in the entire process, because I need a lot of it to do this right, but unfortunately like for so many other people, it always seems to be in short supply for me. So one of the things I'm trying to learn is to make conscious decisions about how to use my time and energy to my benefit. One of the things I've been scrutinizing is my internet behaviour. I've come to the conclusion that although I gain a lot from it which I definitely don't want to give up (first and foremost the friendship and support I get here on lj) there is still time to be won there. I often find myself spending more time behind my computer than intended, carefully reading through every single entry because I feel that with adding people to my flist I make a commitment to be a good friend. Now, I see I've been looking at this too obsessively. Admitting that sometimes you just don't have a connection with someone doesn't mean you've failed. Sometimes there is a click, sometimes there isn't, no harm done. So I've decided to do a small friends cut, because there's some people I just don't feel I have that necessary connection with. My number one priority is to become whole again, and right now I need to focus on using my energy as efficiently as possible. For those of you who won't make it past the cut, I wish you all the best and I hope you understand this doesn't mean I think you're not a good or nice person. The click just wasn't there.